WLAN Unleashed

For the last few quarters WLAN vendors have been on the move. With players changing hands, the options are opening up for those who want more cutting edge technology, but from a larger vendor. This by way of UK reseller publication Microscope - “Network giants in prize WLAN deals”

“The acquisition of wireless networking vendor Colubris by HP ProCurve earlier in the month was the latest in a long-running series of buy-outs of wireless players this year. For ProCurve, the acquisition was its first in over four years and came barely a month after Marius Haas took charge at the unit.”

Knowing how these things work, I suspect the deal was in the works well before Marius joined, but that is by the by. ProCurve seems to be going great guns right now, and expanding from the LAN space to the WLAN space makes good sense for them, and for those of us buying.

Belden has picked up Trapeze, Motorola grabbed ZirDefense (as if they needed any more wireless!), and generally the furniture is being moved around. However, Cisco remains the gorilla in the space. Juniper and 3Com have WLAN products on portfolio, but have yet to make a buy in the space, and player like Meru Networks and Aruba Networks out in the wild.

With more and more laptops in the building, and pressure to provide net access for visiting guests, Wi-Fi WLAN is going to be a larger and larger percentage of the infrastructure, but also more challenging to deploy into buildings, with multiple access points competing for airspace.